


A Goblin's Hoard

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Five times Yeza and Veth kissed.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Another finally-posting-this-to-AO3 fic! Originally written for Valentine's Day 2019. I have a lot of very strong feelings about Veth and Yeza and I hereby present them to you in fic form. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Important Note: Kleenex not included.

The first time Yeza kisses her, she’s surrounded by chanting boys, circled too close around her, jostling her, pulling her braids, pointing at her freckles, laughing and yelling, all taller than she is, crushing her in their shadows. She knows at least one of her brothers is in the mix and mostly trusts him to make sure things don’t get out of hand but mostly she’s scared; but the fear’s also useless, because deep down she knows she deserves this, that they’re not saying anything that isn’t true, that she’s meant for little more in this life than her collections and to be the butt of other people’s jokes.  
  
And then suddenly the group parts and several hands give her a shove from behind and one of them shouts _go for it, Brenatto_, and in the sudden bright burst of sunlight she sees a boy she’s known her whole life, though not well, a little funny-looking, his nose too big and his shoulders a little hunched. He’s looking at her and he looks—scared, and sad, and as he hesitantly steps towards her, almost waddling, she wishes she was brave enough to stand up for him, to say _it’s okay, you can ignore them, I do_—  
  
And then he’s right in front of her and he’s short, almost shorter than she is, and he still looks sad and scared but as their eyes meet he straightens his back and throws back his shoulders and leans forward and kisses her on the lips.  
  
The boys behind them burst into peals of laughter but she can barely hear them over the loud rushing sound in her ears, the strange stutter of her heartbeat, the flood of warmth in her cheeks. _This is a mistake_, she wants to say, and she wants to cry, wants to beat him with her fists for taking this from her—  
  
but he draws away and his eyes are nervous and warm and he’s smiling, a little, without a trace of mockery to be seen (and has anyone ever looked at her without laughing? she can’t remember), and her fists unclench but she doesn’t know what to do and so finally she pushes past him and runs and runs until she reaches the river, until she can drop to her knees and look at her reflection. Same as always, not pretty, not ugly, not worth the time of day the sun spends shining on it—  
  
but not the same, never the same, and she touches her tingling lips and wonders.


	2. two

The second time Yeza kisses her is by the river.  
  
A few weeks after the first kiss he finds her there, pants and sleeves rolled up, and standing in the shallows. She plunges her hand in the water and looks up and sees him standing by a willow tree and freezes, her hand closing around a rock, and she says, “Can I help you?”  
  
“Oh,” he says, and he has a strange look on his face, maybe a smile but maybe too nervous. His hands thrust deep in his pockets and he hunches the shoulders. “No, I just thought I’d say—hello.”  
  
“Hi,” she says, still bent over, still grabbing the rock.  
  
“I’m Yeza,” he says. “Yeza Brenatto.”  
  
The name is as vaguely familiar as his face, and so she nods. “I’m Veth,” she offers.  
  
“I know,” he says brightly, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Neither does the definitely nervous but definitely smiling expression on his face. He rocks back on his heels and says, “Whatcha doin’?”  
  
“Oh,” she says, and uses it as an excuse to straighten up, hiding her fist behind her back. “Just, um, looking for. Stuff.”  
  
“Are you catching minnows for bait?” he asks.  
  
She recoils. “Ew, no,” she says.  
  
“Oh,” he says, looking as mortified as she feels. The river is her safe place, the place where nobody notices her and that’s okay, that’s preferred, and why is he _here_? “What, then?”  
  
“Why do you want to know?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. She takes enough crap from her brothers at home, has had to learn all the good hiding places in the house so they won’t get into her things and tear them apart, and if they’ve sent him to learn her secrets—though she doesn’t really think they’d put this much effort into it—then he can go dunk his head in the river. She’ll hold him down. He’s not much bigger than her. She could probably do it long enough to make her point.  
  
“Oh,” he says, rocking back again, his shoulders hunching even more, and he sounds…hurt? “Oh, I just—I was just wondering. I’ve been looking for you,” he blurts out, before she can continue her skepticism, and instead his words fly over her head, meaningless, and so she just stares at him. “Around town,” he says, as if trying to clarify something. “I…you’re so good at hiding from everyone, and I don’t blame you,” he adds in a hurry, “but it does make it hard to find you. I just came down to the river because I figured you weren’t anywhere else and—”  
  
“But_ why_?” she asks.  
  
He blinks at her. “I just…wanted to see you, I guess. To say…hello. Tell you my name.”  
  
“Apologize for stealing my first kiss?”  
  
She claps her hands over her mouth and turns beet red but he does too. “I _am_ sorry,” he says, and he almost seems to shrivel until his clothes hang too loose on him. “Oh gosh, I—I didn’t—think of it like that. I’m sorry, Veth.”  
  
She blinks. No one’s ever actually apologized to her before. “Oh,” she says, “well. Don’t do it again.”  
  
Of course, he can’t exactly steal her first kiss _again_, and suddenly she thinks he might take that to mean _don’t kiss me_ and that’s not what she means—although why wouldn’t she mean that? Does she want to kiss him? He’s being kind of weird, after all, following her to the river for inexplicable reasons, looking really embarrassed about everything they’re saying, and his hair is bushy and his nose is really big, like, too big for his face, but maybe he’ll grow into it. (He won’t. Halflings don’t grow enough to grow into something that big.) Ugh.  
  
But he smiled at her too, and he’d kissed her and been nice about it, and she thinks he’s trying to be nice now, too, and the thought is a shock enough to make her grip go slack, and with a _sploosh_ her rock falls back into the river.  
  
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she says, because of course it’s stirred up the silt and now she can’t see what’s she’s reaching for. She plunges both hands into the water, feeling around, only looks up when she hears another _splash_ and there’s Yeza standing right next to her, apparently heedless that his pants and his sleeves are getting soaked, feeling around the same as her.  
  
“What are we looking for?” he asks, reaching around blindly, and for a moment she can’t move, can only stare at him, and she’s so surprised that the truth comes out.  
  
“A rock,” she says, “I think it’s a quartz. I collect rocks. I mean, not just any old rocks. Shiny ones. Pretty ones. I collect—I collect pretty things. Things that sparkle when the light hits them. Pebbles and—and colored glass and—and—bits of old brass, stuff like that. I like—I like the way they look,” she says, and now he’s looking at her, really _looking_, a strange fond-sad half-smile on his face, and she’s going red again. “They…they’re nice.”  
  
“They sound nice,” he says, and that startles her into a smile and his face breaks into the biggest grin she’s ever seen, let alone had directed at her, and her heart skips several beats. “Hey, I have some colored glass!”  
  
“You do?” she says, and then she remembers herself and drops her gaze and goes back to hunting for her rock.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m studying alchemy, to take over my father’s business, and we have to order all sorts of stuff and a lot of it comes in different colored jars and stuff so that it doesn’t get all mixed up. We try to reuse them as much as we can—it’s a little expensive, you know,” and she’s not looking at him so hopefully he doesn’t see how her heart sinks when he says it, though she’s surprised she let her hopes get so high in the first place, “but we definitely have extras and I’m sure you could have them.”  
  
She pauses and at that moment the silt clears enough for her to see that she’s found her rock again, but her hand closes around it automatically, the thrill of the find gone. “You are?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s my job to keep track of all of it anyway, Dad wouldn’t care, and—and maybe,” and now he’s stammering and she does look up at him and he’s looking at his feet, “maybe you could come see the lab.”  
  
“The lab?” she says.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Where we do our work. It’s—it’s my…I like to go there,” he says, and he looks up at her and meets his gaze and for the first time in the life she sees someone who _understands_. “To…get away.”  
  
“Oh,” she says.  
  
“Would you like to come see it?” he asks, too eagerly, half-reaching out a soaking wet hand before stopping himself—  
  
but she grabs it before she can think, with the hand that’s holding the rock, so really they’re not holding _hands_, they’re just both holding a _rock_, so there’s no reason for them both to be blushing as hard as they are. “I’d love to,” she says, and that’s that.  
  
They take turns, sometimes wading in the river for rocks, sometimes her perching on a stool in his laboratory while he scurries around finding trinkets he thinks she’ll like. And it’s one of those times in the river, with the wind rushing through the willow leaves and the sun sparkling on the water, when they’re both reaching for a rock and their hands close around it at the same time and they both look up and they’re so _close_—  
  
and he kisses her again, and this time, she kisses him back.


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the most T-rated chapter of the bunch, more thematic than anything else, but there you go.

The third kiss isn’t their third kiss, or even their fourth or their fifth; once the kisses start following in rapid succession, soft pecks too quick to catch or…the other kind, she gives up on counting them. In any case, he seems quite willing to keep providing them, and she’s definitely quite willing to return the favor.  
  
She’s more than willing. She wants more than—favors.  
  
But she also knows who she _is_, has a lifetime’s supply of people reminding her that she’s nothing, and so while she’s happy to go along with him she’s also—terrified. He doesn’t seem to share her terror; he’s so easy-going, quick with a laugh or a smile, unless he’s concentrating on something in the lab, and even though he’s kind of silly looking and nothing special, he doesn’t seem afraid of what everyone else thinks, let alone of what everyone else thinks about _them_.  
  
Not that anyone’s really noticed _them_. Not that anyone ever notices her, except as a last resort.  
  
Except Yeza, of course.  
  
But that’s no guarantee that he’ll _keep_ noticing her, and the thought that one day his gaze will wander terrifies her to the bone, more than any threats her brothers made, more than any village bell warning of fire or flood or goblins or any of the other things that used to paralyze her with fright. She thinks she could face them all, so long as Yeza’s by her side; but if he left…  
  
_When_ he leaves, because of course it’s inevitable. Why would anyone, let alone anyone as smart and funny and clever and good as Yeza Brenatto, waste more time on her than was strictly necessary? Kissing is fun; and maybe he really does enjoy correcting her fumbling attempts in the laboratory; and, even more unlikely, maybe he really does enjoy sifting through river silt in the never-ending quest for shiny rocks. But one day he’ll find a girl he likes more, a prettier girl who smiles more and doesn’t have to hide her buck teeth when she does it, who’s smarter and faster, with cleverer fingers, and Veth will be alone again, and she won’t be able to bear it.  
  
She has to do something. So she listens to what the other girls in town say—listens to what her brothers say when they don’t realize she’s around to hear it—and finally one night, she makes her move.

They’ve taken to sneaking into the laboratory after the rest of his family’s gone to bed, both for kissing and for experimenting with reagents his father doesn’t think he’s ready for. “I don’t know why he trusts me with the inventory,” Yeza tells her, “except that I know he really just wants to retire and pass the whole thing onto me. I don’t think he really cares what I do with it. He just doesn’t want me to blow anything up.”  
  
And for the most part they don’t, though their eyebrows are a little worse for the wear.  
  
But tonight they’re kissing, him sitting on the stool, her perched on the work bench, leaning across the space between until their lips meet. She grips the edge of the bench and thinks _this is nice_, and it is, it really is, it’s all she wants and more; but it’s not going to get her what she needs. So she slowly slides off the bench until her feet touch the floor, still kissing him, and he’s craning his neck to keep contact until she reaches up and tugs on his shirt and he half-falls on top of her.  
  
The edge of the work bench digs into her back as they both let out an _oof_ against the other’s lips, the full weight of him pressed against her and this is—new, and suddenly she wants it, wants her arms around him pulling him closer, but then he puts a hand to the bench on either side of her and braces himself so he isn’t crushing her and they’re barely touching again. Which isn’t the end of the world, but she _wants_—and more than that, she _has to_—  
  
Her hands are still gripping his shirt and she tugs him close again, and he chuckles a little and obliges, one hand still on the bench, the other shyly caressing her cheek. She longs to lean into it but for now she’s _focused_, teasing his bottom lip, keeping a firm grip on his shirt with one hand, pulling him close, nearly coming undone when he flicks his tongue against her lips in return. And then, because why not, she parts her lips and lets him in and he makes a surprised sort of happy noise, which is good, and she breaks away for a moment to take a deep breath before plunging back into the kiss and plunging her free hand down his pants.  
  
She definitely comes into contact with—_something_—hard and soft all at once—and for a moment he groans and the full weight of him is against her again, pressing insistently against her hand, but before she can, uh, _grip_ anything he makes a squealing sort of noise and shoves away from her, grabbing at his pants to keep them up as her hand slips back out of them.  
  
They stare at each other, both flushed, both breathing heavily, and she puts her hands to her cheeks to ground herself and closes her eyes to cling to the memory of his lips on hers because this is it—  
  
“What,” he says in a strangled sort of high-pitched voice, and she can’t see his face to try to read it, “was _that_?”  
  
—this is when he leaves her. Because from what everyone else said, boys weren’t supposed to _push away_ when a girl did that. They were supposed to—_all the way_. But something is wrong with her, as it always has been and always will be, and of course he’s disgusted and doesn’t want anything more to do with her.  
  
“I,” she says, but she can’t choke the words out around the lump in her throat, the hot tears gathering in her eyes. “I—”  
  
“I mean,” he says, and then there’s a pause, and then he says, “I mean, I—but—_why_?”  
  
She opens her mouth but no words come. Shame floods through her, and the deepest embarrassment of all is that she was stupid enough to let herself forget for an instant what she is, to think for a moment that he might—that she could be—_more_.  
  
“Veth,” he says, and she squeezes her eyes shut against the way he says her name, against the fact that he says it at all, even as she hoards it for the day when she’ll never hear it again. “Veth, what’s wrong?”  
  
“I,” she whispers, and then she chokes again. “I just—I just thought—”  
  
Hands on her hands, pulling them away from her face, clutching them in his own, and she takes a shattering breath and opens her eyes and he’s holding her hands and staring at her with nothing but naked concern in his eyes. “Veth,” he says, almost reassuring himself. “What—”  
  
“They say,” she says, stuttering and stupid, “they say boys like—”  
  
“Boys like?”  
  
“_That_,” she says, not even strong enough to glance at—_that_—but he does and looks back to her, turning an even deeper shade of red.  
  
“I—don’t—um,” he says, “uh, don’t—don’t get me…don’t get me wrong, they—_I_—certainly…do,” he says, and she stares at him, drinking him in, barely hearing the words. He’s trying to grow a beard and it’s not working out so well, just a few wispy strands that tickle her chin when they kiss, but his sideburns are coming in quite nicely and he looks a little ridiculous but he’s so proud of them. “But…why?”  
  
She blinks at him, surprised that someone as brilliant and clever and good as Yeza Brenatto hasn’t figured it out. “So you’ll want me,” she says. “So you’ll…stay.”  
  
He stares at her, his mouth hanging open, his reddened lips matching his reddened cheeks, and she adores them. Adores him. And he is going to let her go.  
  
And then instead he says, “Where else would I be going?”  
  
“Anywhere,” she says, and he looks so shocked she feels she needs to say it again. “Literally anywhere else.”  
  
He moves his mouth and finally says, sounding utterly bewildered, “But…why?”  
  
“Because,” she says, and now she’s exasperated, now she’s a little hurt, that he would prolong the inevitable like this. “Because I’m not pretty and I’m not smart and I’m not graceful and I’m not funny and I’m not—I can’t sing worth a darn, and my stitches aren’t neat, and I’m not—I’m weird, I like weird things, I take up too much time and—”  
  
“Whoa,” he says, “Veth,” and then he says her name again, “Veth, Veth, Veth, _Veth_,” until she finally stops talking, though she doesn’t dare meet his gaze. “Veth, who told you that?”  
  
She shrugs, trying to look just at her feet, to not see how he’s holding her hands, to not feel how he’s clutching them as if afraid she’ll let go. As if she _could_ let go. “Everyone,” she says. “It’s common knowle—”  
  
She can’t finish the word because he’s kissing her, because he’s dropped her hands in order to pull her into a hug, to put his arms around her like an iron bar and she’s helpless to do anything but cling to him in return and now she’s crying into his shirt, “and I just wanted to—I didn’t want you to—”  
  
“Everyone,” he says, and his voice has a strange deadly calm she’s never heard in it before, “is wrong.”  
  
She frowns against his shirt. “I don’t think—”  
  
He puts his hands on her shoulder and pushes her away until she can look up to meet his gaze, and she doesn’t want to—is desperate to—and what she sees in his warm gaze is more than she can comprehend. “Veth,” he says, and then he looks sad, and then proud, and then—she doesn’t understand, “don’t you know you’re beautiful?”  
  
“No,” she says, but even as she says it she’s drowning in his eyes and for the first time she—doubts.  
  
“Veth,” he says, “_Veth_,” and then he’s crushing her against him again, his arms tight and desperate. “Veth, you don’t have to—I’m not going anywhere. I couldn’t even try, even if I wanted to, and I don’t. You’re beautiful and brilliant and I’ve always—Veth I’ve _always_—” She feels him swallow hard, her head resting against the hollow of his neck, and then he whispers, “loved you.”  
  
She freezes. She doesn’t—she doesn’t know what to do, she can’t believe, can’t—she _can’t_—he _doesn’t_—but her heart understands what the rest of her is too stunned to hear, and it starts to sing.  
  
“I love you,” he says again, and then he squeezes her and says, with wonder in his voice, “I _love_ you,” and then he’s pulling away again so he can look at her and say it again, “I love you. Veth. Do you hear me?”  
  
“Yes,” she says, trembling, feeling as though the breath of his voice might blow her away.  
  
“I love you,” he says again, “and you don’t ever have to—not if you don’t want to. I mean it’s—it’s uh,” and for a moment he can’t quite look at her, “_nice_, but I don’t…I don’t if you don’t. Veth,” he says, and he ducks his head to meet her gaze, forcing her to face his honesty. “I don’t if you don’t.”  
  
She nods, mutely, relief flooding through her, because although for the first time she—she has an inkling that she _might_—one day—want—not yet. Not yet.  
  
He smiles faintly, and then as they keep staring at each other she says, “You love me?”  
  
“Oh,” he says, and then he’s a brilliant beet-red shade all over, “um, yes.”  
  
“You love me,” she says again, slowly, turning the words over in her mind.  
  
“Yeah?” he says, his voice going a bit high and strangled. “I—uh, sorry, if I shouldn’t—”  
  
She kisses him.   
  
She grabs his shirt with both hands and stands on her tiptoes and kisses him with everything she’s got and then some, and some things she doesn’t have, some things he’s given her, hope and belief and the thought that maybe if someone can love her then it’s all right that she loves him back.  
  
She can’t say it, not yet, _not yet_, so many things not yet but maybe one day; but when she draws back he’s smiling at her, looking at her as if he understands, kissing her again and then pressing his forehead against hers, wrapping one of her braids around his fingers. “I love you,” he whispers. “Want to make some acid and use it to make stars in the glass?”  
  
She nods, too full of too many feelings to speak; and he smiles again, kisses her forehead, and moves away, rustling through the various boxes and bins in the laboratory. He loves her. She closes her eyes, pressing one hand to her lips, holding the other against her chest, trembling; and slowly, ever so slowly, she dares to smile too.


	4. four

The fourth kiss is the day he doesn’t show up.  
  
Not down by the river, where she waits for an hour before deciding she’s worried; not in the laboratory, or at least it seems silent when she presses her ear to the locked cellar doors; not in his father’s shop, where his mother is currently manning the counter and watches her with a sort of friendly suspicion until she can’t bear the waiting anymore and scurries back out into the street.   
  
He’s not at the general store; not at the town chapel to the Dawnfather; still not by the river, when she goes to check; and he’s probably not out in the fields, but she waits until sundown until the workers return, just to see if he’s among them.  
  
She can’t find him, and for the first time in a long time she thinks—maybe he doesn’t want to be found.  
  
Or, maybe he doesn’t want _her_ to find him.  
  
The setting sun is low and red on the horizon, painting Felderwin in dusky browns and too many shadows. It’s not her favorite time of day under the best of circumstances and now she stands in the middle of the town square, contemplating the horrible truth—but _no_, he _said_—and she _believed_ him—and yet he is nowhere and without him she—doesn’t know where to go.  
  
She’s still standing there when the first moon comes up, the sky violet to the west and inky black in the east. She could walk down to the river, fill her pockets with rocks, but even if he doesn’t want her anymore (but he _said_!) she couldn’t bear to disappoint him and she thinks he would want her to survive without him. _She_ doesn’t want to—for what is life even worth, with this last shred of hope torn from her?—but she wants to want to.  
  
Part of her thinks she is being silly, melodramatic, overthinking this, maybe he had to leave town and didn’t tell his mother and so his mother couldn’t tell her; but she has a had time imagining the world beyond Felderwin and an even harder time imagining what would take him there. Some reagant, possibly? He’d mentioned something about reorganizing the store, some new ideas, new possibilities, things he wanted to try, but he hadn’t mentioned travel. But surely he wouldn’t have been sharing his dreams with her if he hadn’t wanted to—include her in them. He loves her.  
  
He loves her, and he wouldn’t just leave her like this.  
  
_It’s only what you’ve always deserved_, whisper the insidious voices in her mind, and she drowns them out with the memory of his voice, _I love you, Veth_, and finally turns her feet towards home.  
  
She opens the door and—  
  
“_There_ you are,” Yeza says, sitting on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, some sort of wadded-up cloth over his left eye, but underneath he’s beaming at her, his grin almost as big as his nose.  
  
Her father sits at the chair next to him, and her mother bustles from the kitchen to the table, setting bowls and ladling stew into them, shouting at one of her brothers who follows orders with his head bowed in apparent shame.  
  
She suddenly—“I was looking for _you_,” she says, a little sharply, but the grin on his face doesn’t waver.  
  
“Well we’ve been waiting for you, child, so hurry up and eat before it goes cold,” her mother says, and then she hollers for the rest of the boys and soon the whole family is crowded around the table, barely able to make room for Yeza, let alone room for her to sit next to him. The conversation is boisterous as always, her brothers teasing each other and her in equal turn, jabbering about what happened in the fields, asking for seconds and, she notices, very carefully not talking to Yeza. He eventually lowers the cloth to reveal a really lovely black eye, not unlike those her brothers used to give her.  
  
“What—” she starts to ask, outraged.  
  
“I—” says her guilty brother.  
  
“Hush!” her mother snaps.  
  
“It’s fine!” Yeza says, still grinning. He looks as though he’s barely making contact with his seat, as if his big bushy hair is a balloon waiting to lift him into the air at any moment. “I’m fine! I’ll be fine. I can still see.”  
  
She wants to ask—so many questions—but nobody wants to tell her anything, that much is clear. So she waits until dinner is over and walks Yeza to the door and says, “What—”  
  
“Oh, go on,” her mother says, “walk him home.”  
  
She frowns and he’s still grinning. “But won’t he just have to walk me back?”  
  
“Happily,” he says, taking her hand and dragging her out the door.  
  
“But I have to help clean—” and then someone closes the door behind them and they’re out on the streets of Felderwin after dark, holding hands, just the two of them with the moons above and the village at their feet, and without even thinking about it she slides her fingers between his until their hands are clasped tight.  
  
He says, “I’m sorry you spent all day looking for me. I didn’t mean to worry you.”  
  
“Were you _here_?” she asks. “The whole time?”  
  
“Well,” he says, and he tugs on her hand and they start walking, “not the _whole_ time. But I thought you’d come home after I didn’t meet you at the river and then I didn’t know where to go look for you and then your brother punched me—”  
  
“_Why_?”  
  
“—don’t worry about it, I’m sure he does it to everyone—”  
  
“True.”  
  
“—and your mother insisted I sit tight and wait for you to come to your senses and come home. Which you did.”  
  
“Eventually,” she says, looking sidelong at him. With their hands joined, their arms brushing and sometimes even their shoulders bumping, she can feel his nervous energy thrumming through him, almost as if he’s quivering. His feet keep trying to skip and she keeps stumbling after him. “Yeza, _what_—”  
  
“Just a minute,” he says, “almost there,” and then he swings their arms back and forth, almost dragging her along with him, and of course she’s happy to go wherever he wants but part of her is suspicious and part of her is already in shock and part of her thinks the rest of her is being _stupid_ because of course not—  
  
Instead of turning around once they reach the store, he fumbles in his pocket for a key and unlocks the front door, pulling her inside and shutting it behind her before she can protest. “There,” he says, “now, come—sit—” and he pulls her behind the counter and she stumbles after him and before she’s even caught her balance his hands are on her waist and then his arms are around her, lifting her off her feet but not quite high enough to sit her on the stool. She grabs onto it, trying to ignore the wild flutter of her heart as his face presses against her chest, and hauls herself the rest of the way up.  
  
He releases her and backs away, goes around the counter and lights the lamp sitting on it before standing in the middle of the store, the front windows framing his silhouette. “_There_,” he says with great satisfaction. “How do you like it?”  
  
“How do I like what?” she asks, mostly bewildered and a little wishing his face was back where it had been.  
  
“The view,” he asks.  
  
“Out…the window?”  
  
“Sure,” he says, and then immediately contradicts himself. “Of the shop! What do you think of the shop, sitting there?”  
  
“It’s…a shop,” she says, a farmer’s daughter by birth. “Did you redo the display in the front? It’s lovely. And—” her eyes rove the walls, desperately wondering what he wants her to see, “I see you put the ant killer on the shelves—did you finally get the ratios right?”  
  
“Yes!” he says, and the delight in his voice is different from the strange excitement he’s been exuding and she recognizes this as triumph over a tricky compound. “It turns out I just needed to adjust the levels of boric acid with—but do you like it? Sitting there?”  
  
“On the stool?” she asks, squinting at him. “Behind the counter?” His eyes light up as if she’s hit upon something important. “It’s…a nice…stool? The counter…is…” She thinks back to the agonizing half-hour she spent here earlier in the day, and says, startled, “Isn’t this your mother’s seat?”  
  
“Was,” he corrects her, and now he’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, hands behind him.  
  
“Oh,” she says. “Is she all right?”  
  
“Of course,” he says, with a slightly furrowed brow, and for a moment she feels a little relief that she’s not the only one who’s confused. Then his expression brightens again and he says, “She’s fine! She just doesn’t want to sit there anymore.”  
  
“Oh,” she says, and she feels herself starting to blush, though she still can’t put her finger on why.  
  
(She knows why. She knows this man in her bones, inside and out, even if all they’ve ever done is kissed. Kissed and talked about their hopes and their dreams and their favorite things and sometimes they’ve fought and mostly they’ve laughed—well, _he_ does most of the laughing, but she doesn’t mind, she loves to listen to it, she loves when he makes her laugh, too. He is brilliant and kind and clever and good and he loves her and she loves him with a ferocity that would surprise him, she thinks; he is brilliant and kind and clever and good and he is _hers_, and she knows why they’re here.)  
  
(_But_, whispers the doubt, _no, never, not_.)  
  
“Are you looking to…hire me?” she says, instead of everything else.  
  
He laughs, startled and delighted, and says, “Something like that.”  
  
“Well,” she says, “you should know that I don’t work for cheap, you know some would pay very handsomely for—”  
  
She stops mid-sentence; he’s holding out his hand, and resting in his palm is a gold ring.  
  
“I,” he says, and suddenly he’s nervous and she tries not to giggle as her own nerves start jangling within her, “Veth, I—Father said I could have it. Said I could have the whole shop, and all the supplies, and the lab, and he and Mother would move into a little house and tend a vegetable garden—he’s been saving, and we could still help—we can have the rooms off the shop—he said I could have everything, if I could find someone crazy enough to help me do it.”  
  
“Are you calling me crazy?” she asks.  
  
“I—um,” he says, clearly thrown off whatever careful preparation he’d done for this moment—and knowing him, there had been a _lot_ of preparation—but now it’s just them, just the two of them in a shop with a counter and a gold ring sparkling in the lamplight between them, and she can’t sing worth a darn but she’s about to burst with happiness and it just might turn into song. “No?”  
  
“Oh,” she says. “So you want someone else to go into business with you, and you just want me to, what, have the babies?”  
  
“_Yes_,” he says, with such passion and excitement and delight and awe that she can’t even blink, can only be caught up in the freedom of knowing that his dreams and hers are the same. “I mean, no, I want you to help run the shop too if you want to, and help in the laboratory, and—and decorate, decorate with all your pretty things, but—but yes, babies too—I—oh _Veth_,” he says, and she’s flying from the stool and over the counter and into his arms, crashing into him and sending him stumbling back a few steps. “Veth,” he says, as she buries her face in his shirt, clutches his sides with her hands, attempts to step inside his skin (and oh, she _wants_, and suddenly, she’s not afraid of it anymore) if it means she can be closer to him. “Veth, will you—”  
  
“Yeza Brenatto,” she says, picking her head up enough to breathe, but that puts her far too close to his far too tempting lips and next thing she knows she’s trying to get the words out around his hungry kisses, “I would—”  
  
“Oh,” he says, “good,” and then suddenly he breaks away and goes, “Oh, no, bad very bad—”  
  
“What—” she starts, and then she realizes his hands are flat against her back and she doesn’t feel the press of a ring on her skin. “Did you _drop it_?”  
  
“No! Yes,” he says, and releases her and drops to his knees and a half second later she’s down there with him, hunting for a glimmer in the lamplight. A giggle’s trapped in her chest at the minor despair on his face; he should know better. Hunting for shiny pretty things is her specialty, and _this_—  
  
This one, as her hand closes around it, is precious. “Here you go,” she says, sitting back on her heels and reaching out to him.  
  
He walks to her on his knees until he is close enough to take her hand and close it around the ring, then gently press her hand against her chest. “It’s yours,” he says. “Like my heart. Always has been.”  
  
She cannot believe she is so lucky. He is so kind and clever and brilliant and good, and _she_—  
  
loves him.  
  
“Oh,” she says, and loosens her hand from his grip, enough to reveal the ring. It’s a plain gold ring, thin and narrow and perfect.  
  
He takes it from her long enough to slip it over her finger. “Veth,” he says, “will you marry me?”  
  
“Yeza,” she says, and oh it’s a nice name, and _oh_ she gets to say it for the rest of her life, gets to look into his warm brown gaze every morning and last thing before she drifts off to sleep, and what life could be sweeter?  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, leaning in close, and suddenly she’s burning up in the heat of him and oh, it’s a different kind of sweetness but just as good, “was that my name or a—”  
  
“_Yes_,” she says, and he’s laughing and she’s laughing and then their arms are around each other and for a soft moment he looks at her as though he, too, can’t imagine anything better; and then his enormous nose (and she’ll live with it too, and love it just as well) is bumping into hers, and she tilts her head and meets his lips, a promise of a lifetime of love sealed with a kiss.


	5. five

The fifth kiss is their first as a family.  
  
They marry in the summer, a small ceremony in the Dawnfather’s chapel, flowers in her hair and sunlight streaming through the colored glass of the windows, painting their clasped hands in purples and blues. Afterwards their families feast and dance and set off one too many fireworks while they slip away to the shop, to _their_ shop, and just before they reach the door Yeza scoops her up in his arms to carry her across the threshold and she shrieks and throws an arm around his neck, her free hand reaching up to hold her flowers in place. He marches quite proudly into the store but by the time they duck through the door to their rooms he’s stumbling and he doesn’t so much carry her into their bedroom as lurch through the doorway and drop her in the bed before doubling over, wheezing.  
  
She lays on her back and stares up at the ceiling, trying to catch her breath from how hard she’s been laughing, one hand on her stomach, the other still holding onto her flowers, and she hears him wheezing and can’t help giggling and finally gives up and rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand.  
  
His hands are on his knees and his head is bowed low and she watches the curve of his back, the way his gut expands with every gasped breath, and she has so much to learn about him and the rest of her life to do it, and then he says, “I love you, but I don’t think I’m ever doing that again.”  
  
She laughs again, throws her head back and closes her eyes and for a moment the world is nothing more than the way her laughter feels and the burning of her love for him in her chest. And then she opens her eyes and looks back to him and he’s raised his head and their eyes meet, and suddenly her whole body’s aflame.  
  
“So,” he says, still a little breathless, “I do if you—” and she’s lunging for him across the bed and he’s tripping over his feet trying to reach her and her hands close around his arm and she pulls him to her (and has she always been this strong? would she have ever known, if he hadn’t come along for her to find out?) and she does if he does and they—do.  
  
They _do_, and they do a lot, fumbling and clumsy at times but never awkward, never nervous, never hesitant or unsure, sheltered in the security of their steadfast love and all the stronger for it.

And it’s fun. For the first time, _fun_ is how she thinks of her life. Marriage is fun; keeping house is fun (if occasionally disastrous); running a shop is stressful but being queen of the displays and organization of components is fun; late-night experiments in the laboratory are fun; she loves him and he loves her and they’re together and she’s _happy_. More than happy; she’s content.  
  
But because they do and they do a lot, things follow in their natural order, and soon enough Yeza’s fussing over her every time she enters the lab and he won’t let her touch anything anymore and she has to sit on the stool in the middle of the room away from everything else until the stool is too uncomfortable and he gets her a chair to sit on instead. She sits on the chair and watches him scurry back and forth, has a lovely view of his back for half an hour as he carefully drips one concoction into another, and she props her feet up on an old crate and rests a hand atop her belly and tries to concentrate on the slow _drip_, _drip_, _drip_ rather than her crushing anxiety.  
  
Most of the time she just pretends nothing’s different, though she can’t sidle sideways behind the counter anymore and she can’t see her feet and the timidity she’s always known has ramped up into a full-fledged screaming terror just below the surface of her thoughts, and she can’t have her toddies anymore and people are always _smiling_ at her, noticing her, sometimes touching her without permission, and she squeezes her eyes shut and pretends she’s somewhere else, or someone else, that they’re talking about some _other_ person who’s going to be a—  
  
Even the river offers no relief, aside from being a cool place to plunge her aching feet. She can sit on the bank and stare at the rocks but she can’t bend over to reach them and she’s not sure that if she fell in she’d be able to pick herself back up. For the first time in a long time she simply wants to get—_away_; and for the first time in her life, she has nowhere to go. As much as she’s suffered—as much as she’s always known that she’s not pretty or interesting or funny or good at anything—she’s always been all right with being herself, at least so long as she was alone, or with Yeza. But now…  
  
Oh, and he’s the _worst_, so proud, so excited, so anxious and hovering, so patient when she snaps at him for being anxious and hovering, so attentive, so doting. He loves her body as ardently and well as when she was half the size she is now, delights in every change he finds, whispers a litany of praise in her ear, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s wrong—  
  
and the smallest part of her thinks that every time she’s tried to tell him he’s wrong, he’s always turned out to be right—  
  
but this is a _mistake_, natural order or no, that she should somehow be entrusted with—the one day the squirming in her stomach is going to be—  
  
and then the day arrives and she’s gripping her mother’s arm in one hand and then bedpost in the other and screaming with all the strength she has in her and she can’t she can’t she _can’t _but the midwife crouches beside her and says _good, good, I can see the head now_ and the world is nothing more than a pinprick of light growing brighter and some desperate primal strength within her demanding _release_ and she tears off its shackles and howls and _pushes  
  
_and it’s over, it’s over, she sags against her mother’s iron grip and cries into her shoulder as she hasn’t bothered to since she was a little girl, and her mother shushes her as she hasn’t bothered to in even longer and for a moment that’s the only sound in her ears, the rushing of her blood and her mother’s quiet hush, the roar of the river after a storm.  
  
And then she hears a single cry, and the world goes—sideways.  
  
Next thing she knows she’s propped up in bed and they’ve handed her a—a thing, a baby, a son, someone’s baby, someone’s son, his cry raw and helpless and this can’t be right, this _can’t be right_, she can’t possibly take care of a baby, she doesn’t even know how to hold him—her mother swoops in, adjusts his head in the crook of her elbow—and then the midwife is there, guiding his questing mouth—oh gods, she has to _feed_ him, she can’t, she _can’t  
  
_and most of all she can’t because she loves him, because he deserves the best, better than anything she could ever hope to give him, she in her littleness and nothingness, she for whom his cry is nothing more than a honed blade plunged in her worthless heart for how could she _possibly  
  
_He’s nursing, somehow, and the midwife says, “There you go, there’s a good lass,” and her mother smooths her sweat-sticky hair away from her forehead, her hand lingering for a moment as if she can’t quite decide whether to kiss her or not. He’s nursing. She’s feeding him. She’s holding him, she hasn’t dropped him yet, she—can’t—do—this—  
  
“Oh,” says a voice, and she closes her eyes against it, against the reverence, the wonder and awe, the barely contained joy, “oh, _Veth_.”  
  
She feels another hand on her forehead, this one a little larger, the fingertips marred with shiny scars from too many close calls, and this time familiar lips follow. “Oh, Veth,” he says again, and then she feels his forehead against hers, the brush of his bushy hair against the side of her head. “Look at him.”  
  
She is helpless against his voice and so, despite her heart’s desire, she opens her eyes and looks down at the little head nestled against her, the closed eyes, the plump cheeks, the working of his jaw as he sucks. The soft dusting of dark hair on the back of his head; one arm, free of its swaddlings, the little fingers closed around his father’s. She is holding a _baby_. _Their_ baby, and oh, he’s perfect, he’s everything his father deserves and more, and she is—too little, too unimportant, _not enough_, and she—  
  
“Veth,” he whispers, and she’s heard her name in his voice a hundred thousand times but never like this, “look what you did.”  
  
—she _can’t_—  
  
“What?” she asks, and her voice is rough and a little bleary and she is, she suddenly realizes, _exhausted_.  
  
“Look,” he says, holding up the perfect little fingers wrapped around his for her inspection. “Look what you _did_.”  
  
“I think,” she says weakly, “I mean you were there, too—”  
  
Normally he’d laugh, but as she looks up at him she sees that he is _radiant_, his face alight as she hasn’t seen since their wedding day, of course, of course, their son is perfect, their son is everything he could ever want, and he will be an excellent father and they will be so close and she will get to be near them and—and there’s hope after all, because if she can be near them, tend to them in their brilliance, then that will be—  
  
that will be—  
  
“Well,” he says, “but no, Veth, _look_. You did this. You made him. You—you just gave _birth_,” he says, and she wonders how much screaming he heard. “He was inside you and now he’s here and _look at him_. You—you—” and suddenly he’s crushing them both in his arms, his head buried in her shoulder, and she’s startled to feel tears against her skin. “_Thank you_.”  
  
He’s always been a little crazy, of course, but this is—she’s tried to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s always been—  
  
_She did this_.  
  
He loosens the embrace to lean his head against hers again and together they look down at their son—their son, she has a son, he has a son, _they_ have a son, and oh the boy will need a name, their tiny little—all his fingers and all his toes, and she—she _did_. She can’t, but she _did_.  
  
She _did_, and suddenly the desperate primal strength within her roars to life again but this time—this time she harnesses it, leashing it with her love for her son and her husband alike, and this is her calling, this is her cry, that she will love them both with every breath in her body come hell or high water; she is the bulwark, the line that shall not be crossed, and gods help anyone who tries to stand against them.  
  
She’s a little giddy, and a little exhausted, and a little hyperbolic, she thinks; but she will guard them with her life, and the thought fills her heart to bursting.  
  
She once settled for a life of nothing and nobody; and what a life she has now, that every day she might discover how much greater and grander her love can be.  
  
“He’s perfect,” she says, croaking a little. “Good…work.”  
  
He laughs and squeezes her shoulders and presses a kiss to her temple. “The best,” he says.  
  
She turns her head to look up at him. “Hello, Papa,” she says, and for a moment in his eyes she sees the same panic; but she’s stronger than it, now, and so she smiles at him until the panic fades away.  
  
He takes a sharp breath and says, “Hello, Mama,” and her smile broadens and he starts to smile too, and then he looks down and touches their son’s head with the barest brush of his fingers. “Hello, son.”  
  
“Hello, son,” she agrees, looking down at him as well. “He’ll need a name.”  
  
“Right,” he says, and in his voice she hears the ground giving out from beneath him, and for the first time she feels the rush of knowing that _she _can support _him_ in this.  
  
“In a little while,” she assures him, and the arm around her shoulders relaxes, and he takes a shaky breath.  
  
“Right,” he says again, and then he says, “Veth.”  
  
“Yeza,” she says, because it’s nice to say his name, because she has the feeling she isn’t going to be saying it as much, now that he’s _Papa_.  
  
He takes another shaky breath and pulls her close, his impossibly big nose smushed against her hair. “Thank you.”  
  
She turns her head until she can push his nose out of the way with hers; and says, “Thank _you_,” and their lips meet and he’s trembling and she’s weak at the knees for him all over again and _oh_, they’re a family now, and _oh_, she’ll always love him first.  
  
They break apart, and then he kisses her again, adoration and a promise both; and then they settle together, not speaking, watching their son sleep. This is her life, now, wrapped up in the safety of Yeza’s arms, held in the unknowing strength of her own; and the years may stretch beyond them with all the joys and sorrows they will bring but she knows herself, now, knows who she is and who she will be—  
  
_Veth Brenatto_, who can and did and will do, too  
  
—and that is all she needs.


	6. and one time they don't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it ain't a Jade fic if it doesn't have a happy ending
> 
> j/k j/k sorry not sorry thanks for reading
> 
> now onto the fic

She doesn’t kiss him goodbye.  
  
The years that stretched before them are reduced to this single moment: the moonless sky above their heads, the soft grass beneath their feet, the rush of the river so close and yet so impossibly far away. The impossible stink of the child in her arms after so many hours-days-weeks without a bath; the precious, incomparable warmth of him against her, where he’s meant to be. Yeza’s hand in her hand, tightening every time she stumbles; their harsh gasps for breath, the quiet whimper from Luke muffled against her skin.  
  
The barking of a goblin search party, impossibly near. They’ve been running for hours, _hours_, no one saw them leave, they couldn’t—  
  
But they are, and growing louder, and Luke whimpers more in response and Yeza’s grip on her hand turns to stone even as they’re running, running, running; running for a river that cannot save them.  
  
And loudest of all—the roar within her heart, the strength to move mountains and walk on water if she could; she is the bulwark; _she is the line they shall not cross_.  
  
For a precious moment she tastes the sweetness of the spring air; she closes her eyes and leans into the perfection of her son’s warmth, rests herself upon the rock of her husband’s hand in hers; and then she lets it all go, shoving Luke into Yeza’s arms, gasping for breath long enough to say, “They can’t chase us both—you’re stronger, you’ve always been, you carry him—go north—I’ll meet you at the river—”  
  
“Veth—” he says, and she doesn’t give him time to say anymore, turns and start running south, and it might be the last thing she ever hears him say and she doesn’t even hear the panic and fear and desperation in his voice because he says her name, her _name_; and her heart is too strong for breaking, for it is full of his love.  
  
She is running and running and running and finally risks a glance behind to see him running, too, running away; and so she turns away from the river and drops her head and runs for the sound of the goblins, one hand clutching a vial, the other a fist, and between the two _she’s_ doomed but _they_ will live—  
  
she loves them, and they will _live_—  
  
She’s a dead woman walking, fighting with a strength that is not her own, until at last they bring her to the river—and of course her first refuge will also be her last—and as they plunge her beneath the surface she can’t help but fight, can’t help but struggle. But she sees it all dimly, as though watching someone else, for in the haze of her mind she holds Luke in her arms and hears Yeza’s voice saying her name a hundred thousand times and she will die loving them and for this she lived, and death is dark and cold and sweet for _they will live _  
  
and she—  
  
and sunshine on pebbles, the smell of sulfur, a child’s laugh and suffocating cold and she—  
  
nothing else—above all—  
  
_Veth_—


End file.
